Patriot Act

PATRIOT ACT

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the PATRIOT Act, a subject which has been much misunderstood. I think some of the misunderstanding has been perhaps just from lack of information or has been misinformation that has been spun in an effort to confuse people and perhaps even to scare people about what is in this important legislation.
Indeed, we are all committed to making sure not only that our Nation is secure, and I believe the PATRIOT Act has contributed tremendously to improving the security of the United States of America, but at the same time we have a fundamental commitment in this country to civil liberties. I believe, and I think the American people believe, the Founders of this country believed firmly that we can have both our national security and our civil liberties. Particularly, in a time of war such as we are in now, while there will be some tension, we need not sacrifice our civil liberties.

Nevertheless, there are those who would play politics with this issue in an effort to score political points, or I think others who perhaps for more benign reasons might just be not very well informed and kind of go along, not really knowing the truth. So I want to talk just a few minutes about the PATRIOT Act and what it has done.

Of course the PATRIOT Act has passed overwhelmingly, just a short time after the terrible events of September 11.
Indeed, the purpose of the PATRIOT Act was to give law enforcement the tools and our counterterrorism experts and agents the tools they needed in order to prevent future 9/11s.

Indeed, the evidence is clear that the PATRIOT Act has served that important purpose. The Department of Justice has broken up four terrorist cells in the United States since September 11, in Buffalo, Portland, Detroit, and Seattle. It has filed criminal charges related to terrorism against more than 300 individuals. So far it has secured 176 convictions or guilty pleas.
Perhaps the best evidence of the success of the PATRIOT Act has been the fact that, thank goodness, America has not suffered another horrific event like 9/11 since that terrible day some 2½ years ago.

I might add we have also been successful in freezing some of the funding that has been essential to financing terrorism around the world. In fact, the PATRIOT Act has allowed us to freeze more than $200 million in funds from organizations that have been sponsoring and funding international terrorism.

Particularly, last week, I guess it was, when we heard the testimony of the former FBI Director Louis Freeh, the former Attorney General Janet Reno, and the current Attorney General John Ashcroft, the American people became introduced more or less the same way that law students are to fundamental principles of law enforcement and due process. Even more than that, the American people were introduced to something that was referred to as "the wall."

The wall was the subject of a 1995 memo by Jamie Gorelick, then Deputy Attorney General, now on the 9/11 Commission. Indeed, as she has pointed out, the wall between our antiterrorism and intelligence-gathering efforts and our law enforcement efforts has been longstanding. But it is not a matter that is constitutionally required; it is something the American Government had done to itself. It is a limitation that Congress had placed on information sharing between law enforcement officials. Some only investigate crimes after they have occurred, trying to root out the guilty and then to convict the guilty of the crimes they have committed. The wall is between those law enforcement officials and those intelligence agencies, counterterrorism officials whose job it is to prevent a terrorist attack from even occurring and to preempt that terrible event from occurring. So it was through the PATRIOT Act that we saw this wall come down that has been so important to information sharing.

Indeed, this is not a partisan issue. Attorney General Janet Reno said just a few short days ago, on April 13, with respect to the problems of information sharing within the FBI and other Federal officials, that:

Many of these issues will be or have been resolved by the passage of the PATRIOT Act or other statements.

Indeed, to my recollection, that is not the same words but essentially the same testimony that was presented by former FBI Director Louis Freeh. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who served during the previous administration, in talking about this wall that had been brought down as a result of the PATRIOT Act said:

. . . the wall is not an appropriate one with respect to counterterrorism, and that's been repaired both by the PATRIOT Act and the court of review.

I believe the court of review he is referring to is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which creates a court of seven Federal judges who review requests for various intelligence mechanisms that try to make sure or, in fact, do make sure as much as is humanly possible that the rights of people who are accused of crimes are not unfairly jeopardized in this process.

The point is that the wall that had been erected separating our law enforcement personnel and preventing them from sharing information with our counterterrorism officials has now been torn down and we now allow information sharing which, indeed, has made America safer.

The PATRIOT Act specifically makes it easier to track terrorists in the digital age. When journalist Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal was kidnapped in Pakistan, the terrorists made the mistake, as it turned out, of sending the ransom demands by e-mail. The PATRIOT Act, having brought our laws into the information age, allowed investigators to quickly obtain essential information from the Internet service provider that the terrorists were using. This in turn led them to cybercafes in Pakistan and then to some of Daniel Pearl's killers, who are now in prison thanks to the expanded tools provided by the PATRIOT Act.

Some have worried aloud that we are jeopardizing our civil liberties by creating a law which allows expanded authority to law enforcement and counterterrorism authorities. But what many people don't understand, or don't know-there is no reason they should know other than the fact that they have now learned more about it-is the PATRIOT Act actually applies tools that have already been in use in other contexts. For example, before September 11, investigators had better tools to fight organized crime than they did to fight terrorism. For example, for years law enforcement officials used roving wiretaps to investigate organized crime. I think it was Senator JOE BIDEN who said if roving wiretaps are good enough for the mob, then they are good enough for terrorists. He, of course, advocated, as many on this floor did, for that. Here is a copy of his remarks. I paraphrased it. Let's go to the exact quote. He said:

. . . the FBI could get a wiretap to investigate the Mafia, but they could not get one to investigate terrorists. To put it bluntly, that was crazy. What's good for the Mob should be good for terrorists.

Those are statements with which I agreed, made by Senator JOE BIDEN on October 25, 2001, which I submit were true then and remain true today.

I already mentioned that aspect of the PATRIOT Act which has made it easier for us to cut off the financial support that has been used to support terrorist acts. Osama bin Laden, when he first left Saudi Arabia and went to Afghanistan as part of the anti-Communist Jihad, after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, he and other Jihadists declared holy war against the Soviets at the time. The way he got started in his terrorist activities was financially supporting the acts of other Jihadists, other Muslim extremists. At that time, he directed their fire at the Soviet Union until, of course, the Soviet Union left Afghanistan. Then they turned their fire on America and other freedom-loving countries.

My point is, getting at the financial support for terror was very important. Indeed, the PATRIOT Act has made it much
easier to get to that and was responsible for capturing some $200 million in terrorist financing, which has been very important.

One of the things that has concerned me, and no doubt others, about the PATRIOT Act has been the way people have used the PATRIOT Act as almost a dirty word. It has been used to scare people. It has been used to mislead people about what the act does. It is important to understand what the act does and what it does not do.

It has also been used to raise money. This is part of the scare campaign the American people deserve to know about and we as Members of this body need to remind ourselves of and make ourselves aware of. I happened to get a solicitation from the American Civil Liberties Union at my home. This is an excerpt. It caught my eye because I thought, now I understand why there are so many people who are misled and frightened by the PATRIOT Act because there are organizations such as the ACLU that are misleading people about what it does. They are using that fear to raise money. We know one of the strongest motivations there is for human beings is to scare them. Indeed, that is exactly what is happening by misleading the American people about what the PATRIOT Act does, by organizations such as the ACLU.

This solicitation letter I received at my residence said in part:

We need your immediate help to stop radical anti-liberty proposals from becoming radical anti-liberty laws of the land with Congress' and the White House' seal of approval.

Indeed, that sort of statement is not alone. We have another chart that talks specifically about the PATRIOT Act, and another excerpt from the same solicitation by the ACLU:

The USA PATRIOT Act expands terrorism laws to include "domestic terrorism" which could subject political organizations to surveillance, wiretapping, harassment, and criminal action for political advocacy.

If that were true, I would be standing and saying we need to look at this twice. We need to do something about it. We need to look further to see whether perhaps we have done something wrong or it needs correction or review.

I was at a hearing of a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senator Feinstein put her finger on this and pointed out the kind of hysterical scare tactics the ACLU and others have used in mischaracterizing what the PATRIOT Act does are flatly unfounded. I was there at this hearing, but I had the statement made into a chart so the quote is clear. Senator Feinstein, to her credit, is always a Senator who does her homework. She does her homework in every case, sometimes to my aggravation when she is on the other side of an issue, but sometimes I am glad she does. This is a case where I am glad she did her homework as she always does.

I have never had a single abuse of the PATRIOT Act reported to me.

She was not just sitting passively back waiting for people to write or call as they do to our offices to complain or to register some concern about legislation or some Federal activity.

She went on to say:

My staff e-mailed the ACLU and asked them for instances of actual abuses. They e-mailed back and said they had none.

It is very disturbing that the same organization that mails solicitations to houses of not just Members of Congress but to people all across America, trying to frighten them, mislead them, and scare them into believing Congress has acted without concern for civil liberties or perhaps some law we passed has been abused by Attorney General John Ashcroft and others, when, in fact, it is just not true. Everyone should be concerned about that. It ought to be exposed for what it is.

Notwithstanding the comments of people like Senator Biden, who supports the PATRIOT Act, Senator Feinstein, who has done this investigation to find out whether, in fact, there has been abuse-and there has been none reported, even when asked for examples to support their scare tactics-there are some now who say it is time to eliminate the PATRIOT Act or to replace it, using other similar scare tactics.

I might point out this is not limited to the Congress. I had my staff refresh my recollection because I had remembered-indeed, the Presiding Officer may remember, too-there are press reports about city councils around the United States that passed resolutions condemning the PATRIOT Act based on the disinformation and scare tactics the ACLU and others have used to mislead them about whether there was, indeed, a threat to the civil liberties of their constituents. In fact, 287 local governments across the United States of America have passed such resolutions condemning the PATRIOT Act. I am sad to say, three of those were in Texas: If my recollection is correct, the Dallas City Council, Austin City Council, and one from a smaller municipality.

So we know at least there is some evidence that the kind of scare tactics and misinformation people have been spreading, people at the ACLU have been spreading, is, unfortunately, working, because not enough people like me and others in this body are standing up and correcting the record and providing the truth.

Unfortunately-it is not unfortunate; it is our system. We have elections for President every 4 years. We have elections for the House every 2 years and every 6 years for the Senate, but it should not be too surprising some of this disinformation and misinformation and scare tactics have gotten into the Presidential campaign.

Indeed, I listened with some concern during the race for the Democratic nomination for President where various candidates for that Democratic nomination for President continued along this line of disinformation, misinformation, and scare tactics specifically regarding the PATRIOT Act. The current nominee for President of the Democratic Party participated in that, what I call "piling on." He said in a speech at Iowa State University:

So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft.

Unfortunately, this is an instance, I will interject in the quote, in which Attorney General Ashcroft has been reviled, he has been called all sorts of names, held up as a boogeyman in part of the scare tactic for doing his job, for enforcing the laws
Congress has passed and the President has signed. If the Attorney General of the United States of America will not enforce the laws Congress passes and the President signs in order to make America more secure, who will? Thank goodness, we have a courageous individual who is willing to stand up against unwarranted criticism and this sort of misinformation or disinformation campaign and enforce the law Congress passes because he believes, as Congress believed when it passed the law, as the President believed when he signed the law, the PATRIOT Act makes America more secure.

Going back to the quote by Senator Kerry at the Iowa State University:

So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft.

He goes on to say:

That starts with replacing the PATRIOT Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time.

He later had an interview on "Morning Edition" on National Public Radio on August 18, 2003. He said:

If you are sensitive to and care about civil liberties, you can make provisions to guarantee that there is not this blind spot in the American justice system that there is today under the Patriot Act.

Unfortunately, this disinformation campaign, which stands in stark contrast to the lack of any evidence that Senator Feinstein found in her investigation about abuses, continues now into the Presidential campaign, now that the Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party has been chosen.

Indeed, this is on Senator Kerry's Web site, John Kerry for President Web site. He said:

John Ashcroft has used new authority under the Patriot Act to perform "sneak and peek" searches without ever notifying anyone and without any judicial oversight.

Well, besides this campaign of disinformation and misinformation and scare tactics, I can assure you neither the Attorney General nor any other United States attorney or Federal law enforcement official can legally perform any kind of search without judicial oversight. That is wrong. It is a false statement.

Even if we pulled this out of all the other contexts I have talked about-the disinformation, the misinformation, and the scare tactics-this is a flat misstatement. I hope Senator Kerry will correct that on his Web site because no search under any kind of warrant can be conducted without the approval of a judge or an impartial magistrate. That is a basic part of our criminal law. But, here again, I am worried that unless people stand up and correct the record, this kind of disinformation will continue.

But the worst part of it is this: Notwithstanding the kind of statements I covered by Senator Kerry and others, these are some of the same people who voted for the PATRIOT Act when it passed. Indeed, on October 25, 2001, Senator Kerry said:

I am pleased at the compromise we have reached on the antiterrorism legislation, as a whole, which includes the sunset provision on the wiretapping and electronic surveillance component.

Then later, more specifically to the subject at hand, this quote is talking generically about the laws that changed included in the PATRIOT Act and others. But he was interviewed on Fox News on October 25, 2001. John Gibson of Fox News said:

Senator Kerry, today, Attorney General Ashcroft said that terrorists have reason to be afraid, very afraid of this new terror legislation. Why? What's in it that has so much sharper teeth?

Senator Kerry said:

It streamlines the ability of law enforcement to do its job. It modernizes our ability to fight crime.

Well, I agree with the comments of Senator Kerry in October of 2001 about the benefits of the PATRIOT Act. And I disagree with the comments Senator Kerry-the same person-made when he decided to run for President, and now that he is a Presidential nominee, where he is using the misinformation, this disinformation, these scare tactics, unfortunately, in contrast to the lack of evidence Senator Feinstein was able to glean from even the ACLU about any evidence of abuses.

The fact is, the PATRIOT Act has made America a safer place. And no political campaign, no fundraising goal justifies
misleading the American people about what is good about the PATRIOT Act and how it has contributed to bringing down this wall separating law enforcement and counterterrorism officials from sharing information. Indeed, as I said, the best evidence about why the PATRIOT Act is good law, good public policy, is the fact we have not been hit like we were on 9/11. Thank God for that. I know, of course, we hope and pray we never will again be hit in that way. But we are not going to be safer if we play politics with our national security, even in a Presidential year when the attraction is so irresistible, it appears, to some.

The PATRIOT Act has made America safer. Janet Reno, John Ashcroft, Louis Freeh, people on both sides of the aisle, people who have put their hand on a Bible and sworn to uphold the laws of the United States of America, to protect the Constitution-these are people who have testified under oath the PATRIOT Act has made America safer.

So I say, let's not play politics with this important law. Let's not play politics and risk American lives by continuing the disinformation and misinformation and the scare tactics to the point where we would go back and eliminate or revise or neuter this important protection which has made our country so much safer.

So, Mr. President, with that, I would like to turn to some additional matters on behalf of the majority leader.

I see Senator Reid on the floor. At this time, on behalf of the majority leader, I would ask-

Mr. REID addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. ALEXANDER). The assistant Democratic leader.

Mr. REID. If the Senator would yield for a comment?

CORNYN. I would be happy to yield.